


which nobody can deny

by IShipItAllAndThenSome



Series: Codas About Giving Them Some F*cking Emotional Support [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 3rd Person Limited POV, Earth Birthday (Supergirl TV 2015), Emotionally Honest Lying, F/F, Gen, Kara And Lena Are Best Friends, Kara Danvers is Not Okay, Lena Luthor Doesn't Know Kara Danvers is Supergirl, Let Them Fucking Talk To Each Other Goddamnit, POV Kara Danvers, References to s4ep11: Blood Memory, i'm in my feelings so you have to deal with it, literally so much fucking hugging and crying can u tell i'm a sappy mess, s4e12 Coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 22:17:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17875868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipItAllAndThenSome/pseuds/IShipItAllAndThenSome
Summary: Alex doesn’t know Kara is Supergirl, or even an alien at all, which means there is no one to celebrate her earth birthday with—no one who isn’t already occupied with something happier, more necessary, more meaningful.





	which nobody can deny

After Alex left, citing her exhaustion and deep need to hit the hay, Kara didn’t quite know what to do with herself.  
She could go to bed, too, of course, but she found that she really didn’t want to.  
Last year’s Earth Birthday had been spend in a Reign-induced coma; the year before that, she and Alex had split a cupcake in her kitchen.  
This year, Alex didn’t even remember who she was, let alone why this day would mean anything more than a few heart-shaped marshmallows on sticks. And Kara didn’t want, or need, anything big or extravagant, or even for Alex to say Happy Earth Birthday!.  
It was just that there was no one who she could talk to about it. How hard the loss hit her, on this day especially. How much lonelier it made her feel.  
This was the fifteenth year she’d spent on Earth. The first time she was conscious of just how much more of her life had been spent as a stranger, a secret, in hiding, cut off from her past and her present and barely thinking about the kind of future she could have, the kind of future she could’ve had.  
So Kara suited up and coasted over National City, eyes shut, just listening. The friction of an atmospheric shell against a planet in motion was like a dull, soft whistle, or the crash of a wave that never stopped breaking. She didn’t have it in her to be cognizant of much more than that sound, only available to her ears. Another secret she was alone in knowing.  
It was an hour, maybe more, until she felt steady enough to go back to her apartment by herself, to take off her suit and put on pajamas, to tie back her hair and tuck the arms of her glasses around her ears, to become her other half again. Munching on marshmallows, she curled up on the couch, knees under her chin and head under a blanket, and cued up The Wizard of Oz, a batch of brownie batter ready to go in the oven once it finished pre-heating.  
Before Dorothy even fell into the pig sty, Kara’s phone rang. Sniffling, she paused the movie and picked up without looking, eyes still fixed on Judy Garland’s face mid-‘lemondrop.’ “Hello?”  
“Oh, I’m sorry. This is a bad time, you’re busy, I can—“  
Kara frowned. “Lena? Are you okay?”  
“Yes.” A sniffle. “No.” Another sniffle. “I don’t know. But it’s not your problem, it’s fine, I’m fine, really, so I should just—“  
“I’m your friend, Lena. Your problems are my problems, and you know I’ll do anything to help if I can.” Kara shifted, legs now criss-crossed instead of jackknifed under her jaw, elbows on her knees. “Are you okay?”  
There was a moment of—not silence, because Kara could very distinctly hear traffic from wherever Lena was, late-night drivers honking, date night high heels clacking on concrete, but Lena wasn’t saying anything, was sort of holding her breath. Surface tension, the air between them full just shy of spilling over.  
“Are you?” Lena asked, voice thready.  
Kara’s eyes blurred. The tension broke, and spilled over.  
“Can I come over? I don’t think either of us want to be alone right now.”  
“You,” Kara said, grinding the heel of her hand into her eye, “are so smart.”  
Laughing wetly, Lena pulled away from the phone and gave her driver an address, then said, “I’m maybe half an hour out. Do you want me to grab anything on the way?”  
“No, that’s okay.”

Naturally, when Lena arrived, she was dressed to the nines in a fur-collared coat and towered over a slipper-clad Kara in her stilettos, and bore a bottle of wine and a gold velvet box of chocolates.  
“I know you said not to,” Lena began, “but they would’ve gone to waste otherwise.”  
“I’m just glad you’re here.” Kara reached over and grabbed both offerings, setting them on the kitchen island before reaching out and letting Lena hold onto her for support as she unbuckled one strappy heel. “I’m a little surprised, though—I would’ve thought you and James…?”  
Lena stumbled onto flat feet and shook her head. “You, Ms. Danvers, are my top priority.” She took off her coat and hung it by the door, brow furrowing. She sniffed delicately, and the frown deepened. “Or maybe the smoke I smell.”  
“Oh, shoot.”  
Together, they managed to rescue the pan, carving out the still salvageable middle bits and heaving the charcoal-tinged edges into the trash, along with the parchment paper they were stuck to. Kara took off one oven mitt, wiping her eyes as discreetly as she could with the other before tossing both down on the countertop.  
Lena put them on their little peg, ever organized, and then wrapped her arms around Kara’s waist. “Now, what’s got you grief baking?” she asked quietly, rubbing Kara’s back.  
Kara folded like origami, practically collapsing, arms winding over Lena’s shoulders like a bandage. She tucked her face downward, the crown of her head resting against Lena’s shoulder, and felt a sob rising in her chest.  
Maybe Lena felt it, too, like vibrations through a wall, because she said, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” but Kara did want to talk about it. More than anything, she wanted someone else to know, and until that moment, maybe, she hadn’t realized how right it would be if that person were Lena.  
But opening her mouth to try only unleashed a sharp, shaky breath, and Lena hugged her tighter, hands clutching at the soft flannel of her pajama shirt, twisted to kiss her hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”  
Lena shuffled them both over to the couch, bundled Kara up in blankets, pressed a warm brownie into one hand and the remote into the other. Almost on autopilot, Kara pressed play. 

Usually, Kara could hold off on crying until the very end, not even because she didn’t want to show weakness or vulnerability, but because she didn’t want her eyes to be too blurry to see every single frame.  
Tonight, though, as Dorothy pounded on the storm cellar doors and begged Auntie Em to let her in, Kara felt the first tears start rolling down her cheeks, impossible to stop, and then the words followed suit.  
“When I was thirteen,” she said, whisper-soft, “my parents died. And I almost did, too, I barely survived, and only because of them, but I—I was asleep for a long time. And when I woke up, I moved in with the Danvers’. They were the first people I saw, after, besides—besides Clark, when he brought me to them.”  
Lena said nothing, but she gave Kara’s hand, already tangled with hers, a comforting and encouraging squeeze, a silent Go on, I’m listening.  
“So it was sort of my new birthday. Not at first, because I was… I was so angry, at first. To have lost them, to have lost so much, and then to be expected to just adapt. Like, yes, everyone you’ve ever loved is dead, now start over like everything is fine, and you’re normal, not a gaping wound that might never close. So, at first, I resisted everything. I didn’t want the Danvers’ to love me, because I didn’t want to be somebody they could love. I didn’t want to be anybody but the girl I used to be, with my mom and my dad and—“  
And Kara’s voice broke, so sharply that she couldn’t talk around it. She pulled her hand out of Lena’s to cover her mouth, her face, and slumped against her side once more. Lena wrapped one arm around her, rubbing her shoulder, put the other on her knee. Waited.  
“It took me a really long time to want to be normal,” Kara finally managed. “And Alex was a really big part of that. We—god, we hated each other at first. Neither of us wanted to be in a five mile radius of the other, and Eliza put us in twin beds five feet apart. And eventually, I liked having her there, I liked being there with her, with them, and I—I wanted to celebrate that. And I wanted to celebrate my parents, getting me out of there, making sure I survived. So I found out the anniversary of when I woke up and came to live with them. And it’s today.”  
“Oh, Kara.”  
It wasn’t pitying, the way Lena said it. Gentle, sure, but not like she thought Kara was fragile and weak, but like she understood, or just saw, how much this meant. How much this hurt.  
“And…”  
How to say it, how to say it. Can’t say all of it, can’t tell the truth, because Lena’s been to the D.E.O., Haley might track her down to ask, I couldn’t bear it if she forgot me, too.  
“And Alex forgot. She, uh, she got concussed a few weeks back, in Parthas, when those… raged-up Children of Liberty tried to attack Nia’s mom’s funeral, and since then she’s been having some memory problems? And she forgot what today was.”  
If at all possible, Lena’s hug tightened while her grip softened. Her thumb moved in a soothing arc, and Kara could hear her throat click on a swallow.  
“I mean, she came here, after work, you know. We talked. And it was—it was a good talk, I think.” Kara sniffed, dragged the cuff of her sleeve under her eyes. “But she didn’t say anything about it, and she—she would’ve. If she remembered. But she didn’t, she doesn’t, so.”  
Kara dabbed at her other eye, and Lena took advantage of the way she twisted to do so to pull her into a full-frontal hug. “I’m sorry,” she said, her own voice as wobbly as Kara felt. After a long moment, and Kara reaching her free arm around to cling to the small of Lena’s back, Lena sniffed. “I’m pinning your arm.”  
“It’s okay.”  
“And I’m sorry she doesn’t remember. I—That must be horrible, I can’t imagine how it feels to have your sister forget something like that.” Lena smoothed a hand down the back of Kara’s head, short nails and soft fingertips gliding through her hair, palm coming to cradle the nape of her neck. “I’m glad you told me, though. And I’m glad I could be here tonight.”  
“Me, too.”

At almost three in the morning, they finally finished the movie. Kara, still curled against Lena’s side, was so exhausted, so cried-out, so comfortable there that she was barely awake to hear Dorothy say the line that always made her weep:  
I’m not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all!  
This time, she didn’t have it in her to tear up again, but as if Lena knew she could’ve, she squeezed her shoulder briefly, planted another kiss on the top of her head.  
Kara didn’t stir, and so neither did Lena. She let out a soft sigh, and then murmured, “I don’t know what you and Alex usually do today.” A pause—Kara thought vaguely that she might’ve looked at the time, on her phone or the cable box. “Yesterday. I don’t know if you sing happy birthday or visit their graves or if we’ve already done everything. But, uh, when the Luthors adopted me, a year later, Lex picked me up from school early. And we went to the beach, outside of Metropolis, and we sat on the rocks, and he sang. Not happy birthday, but.”  
Another stretch of silence. No tension, no risk of a spill, no space between them.  
“For she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow—”  
“’s from Clue,” Kara mumbled.  
Lena laughed, a little self-conscious. “I thought you were asleep.”  
“‘m nearly.”  
“Then I should let you get to bed.”  
But she didn’t move to leave, or even to put their wineglasses in the sink. She stayed put.  
Even so, Kara stretched an arm across her lap as if to hold her in place. “Stay? Just ’til morning?”  
“Of course, Kara, I’ll stay as long as you want me.”

**Author's Note:**

> So the last V Day episode on supergirl was in s2, when Alex ditched Kara to hang out with Maggie for their first couple’s valentine's day and all the white martian shit happened. This time around, not only does Alex not remember that Kara has an earth birthday, she doesn’t even, like, mention “this is the anniversary of when we became sisters, of course I want to spend the day with you, but I have work and it’s too dangerous to bring you along so I’ll come by after, okay?” Like…. Hello… so I hope u enjoyed me projectile crying my Kara feelings at you. Happy belated vday.  
> (also I know I owe u an s3write, it’s happening, but I’ve been feeling rlly burnt out and like… I’m taking a sabbatical from college to get myself right and hopefully this is a part of that)  
> also also idk why the formatting on this looks so fucking Uglie but like... i amn just a little creacher. I cannot change this


End file.
